The left field position in Baltimore has often been cast as a competition between Nolan Reimold and Felix Pie (and to a much lesser extent, Luke Scott). It had been assumed that Reimold had won the spot with his outstanding batting line last year of .279/.365/.466, but you might be surprised to know that Felix [...]

I’ve had a peculiar reaction to all this Mike Gonzalez stuff: I’m in a deathgrip of ennui. There’s a lot of competing thoughts going on in my head, and like the Three Stooges they’ve wedged each other off. That leaves me just kind of sitting here, watching helplessly and basically…not reacting. At all. I need [...]

If I can be deafeningly obvious for a moment, let me just say that I love Opening Day in Baltimore. The huge crowd, the chill in the air, the feeling of imminent possibility, the tacky orange carpet, the bunting, the deep green and brown of the infield after a long gray winter. I feel like [...]

Admit it, while the official start of the season is fun and all, you’ve really been saving up your enthusiasm for tonight. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. As good as Kevin Millwood and Jeremy Guthrie can be (or used to be) , they’re still stopgap veterans. Brian Matusz is The Future. I still have [...]

Not Much (In Many Ways) With a couple of (frustrating) games between us and the end of Spring Training, we can look back with a nostalgic eye for the days when we were gnawing our teeth about the  struggles of some key players like Matt Wieters, Kevin Millwood, Brad Bergesen, Nolan Reimold, Jeremy Guthrie, and [...]

So, my intention here was to write about Troy Patton. Between a hectic life (I’m leaving Rochester behind forever in just a few weeks!) and the creeping realization that I had nothing interesting to say about Patton, I lost my motivation for it. This is not to say Troy Patton doesn’t intrigue me, because he [...]

It’s not every day that a team signs an All-Star former MVP with a still above-average bat and he gets asked at his introductory press conference about the hot upcoming prospect who will replace him. And yet, even as I watched Andy MacPhail cut in and save a squirming Miguel Tejada, I wanted the question [...]

Jake Arrieta seems to have fallen in favor behind Chris Tillman and Brian Matusz (he didn’t even get to sit near them or step-father-figure Kevin Millwood in Spring Training!), and that’s surprising to me. Arrieta had a dominant half season in Bowie before struggling in Norfolk last year, though Dave Stockstill claimed that Jake had [...]